Dog said zilch, my rates rose

From high in my fastness I saw the postie panting up the hill. Within seconds I was at the letter box. ‘‘Down, my rising heart,’’ I murmured, as I slid a hopeful finger under the flap of the dull brown council envelope. Surely this would be the year my luck would change. Every tide turns eventually, and after so many years of rises, this had to be, just had to be, the year when the council rates would fall.

I drew a brochure from the envelope. ‘‘A Guide to Your Rates’’, it said. My hands shook so violently I could barely read it. I scanned the headings. How Rates Work, I read, Rates We Charge, and then, hallelujah and all praise to Allah, Yahweh and of course Quetzalcoatl, Rate Reductions. There on the wintry drive I danced a jig.

‘‘I told you, dog,’’ I bellowed. ‘‘Our day has come, our luck has turned, the ship of happiness is docking even as I speak.’’

The dog, poor literal beast, looked down towards the wharf.

‘‘The boat is figurative, dog,’’ I said, ‘‘but the boon is real. The rates have been reduced. We’ll dine tonight on all that’s finest in the butchery wall at Lyttelton SuperValue. You hear me, dog, you hear me?’’

I positively skipped up the drive, the dog beside me, his tail going like the Wind Wand. Seated at the kitchen table to read of the bonanza that the council would bestow on me, I rubbed my hands together so fiercely that they sizzled. I went straight to Rate Reductions. But oh the woe. Reductions, I discovered, meant only the rebates available to the poor.

Every year when I was a child my father was invited to play cricket at a ground belonging to a bank. To a boy that ground was the Happy Land of which Quetzalcoatl spoke. The turf was a cushion, the playground a wonder and the cakes and fizzy pop ran all day long. I looked forward to the trip for months. Then one year it rained. The game was cancelled. We did not go. Until this moment that was the greatest disappointment of my life.

And already the dog was pointing a paw at a single sentence buried in the heart of the brochure: The average Christchurch household will pay about $2.80 more a week in rates this year.

‘‘What?’’ I exclaimed. I pulled the invoice from the envelope. They demanded $690 for the quarter. Last quarter they demanded $647. A tickle of the calculator told me this was a rise of 6.6 per cent.

‘‘Where in this document does it acknowledge that rates have risen by 6.6 per cent?’’ I asked. The dog said nothing.

‘‘Name me a councillor who ran on a platform of raising rates by 6.6 per cent, who proposed a rise of four times the rate of inflation.’’

The dog said nothing.

‘‘Has the price of dog roll risen by 6.6 per cent? Has our household income risen by 6.6 per cent?’’ The dog said nothing.

‘‘And I see that I am now committed to 10 years of paying to rebuild the cathedral, a place I would enter only if dragged by oxen, and that either the moribund Anglican Church, or the city council, or in all probability both, self-evidently underinsured. Does that seem right to you?’’

The dog said nothing.

‘‘Have you heard of the farmer ant, dog?’’ I said. ‘‘It farms aphids. It keeps them in the dark and milks them for their honeydew. The aphids have no choice in the matter. They exist only to be milked.’’

‘‘That’s very interesting,’’ said the dog, who hasn’t a metaphorical bone in his body. 1. Which former high-profile New Zealand politician serves on the boards of Australian retail giant Wesfarmers and Mount Cook Alpine Salmon?

2. What American city is located on Puget Sound?

3. What is the name of a famous car from a 1968 children’s fantasy movie that’s now owned by Sir Peter Jackson?

4. Who hosts the TV series Fish of the Day?

5. The act of permanently banishing someone from the Catholic Church is known as what?

6. What fodder crop shares its name with a city in Switzerland?

7. Which famous royal once complained that he was the only man in Britain not allowed to give his surname to his children? 8. According to the Bible, who fasted for 40 days and nights in the desert?

9. SkyCity owns casinos in what two New Zealand locations besides Auckland?

10. In which Australian city would you find the Rod Laver Arena?